SOCIAL COMPETITION: WHERE’S THE SCOREBOARD?

Social competition follows a different set of rules than sports.

Sports take preparation and executing a plan.

Then there’s the scoreboard.

It explains the difference between winners and losers with few questions.

Sports come with an extra benefit: Sportsmanship.

That means being a good winner and not such a sore loser.

Social competition takes a different route.

Buy a new watch for a big win.

New shoes? Another big win.

Flashy car, fancy house, trophy wife, the list goes on.

Too many people collect their life affirming gear and put it on their personal scoreboard and somehow feel like they’ve got a green light to say and do whatever they want.

If their actions hurt others? Too bad. Scoreboard, bitch.

The problems start when fancy people get denied. It’s hard for them to understand the concept of not being able to do whatever they want.

Even worse is when they tell others how to live their life, and get ignored.

That’s got to sting, sting like a bee.

The Biggest Losers

When you wake up with Muhammad Ali floating over your like a butterfly, you’re not the winner.

Imagine any fighter, a boxer by trade, getting off the canvas after being counted out and claiming victory.

They got knocked out, TKO’d, decisioned based on judges scorecards, or quit. None of those are wins.

What sort of moron even wants to claim victory after an ass-kicking with the King still in the ring? Do that and you might get whupped some more.

There’s only one thing to do when you’ve had enough and can’t takes no more.

Hands of Stone did it, and the only one I can remember.

This link points to the best two minutes of a social competition boxing match in the history of the sport.

Maybe the only one.

Go ahead and lose, but you can’t claim victory. That’s how it works.

There have been exceptions.

The medal ceremony for the 1972 Olympic basketball tournament. The second place silver medal spot is empty. Until the Munich Olympics, America had won every basketball gold medal.

In the end, the American team had been cheated on the court and refused to accept the tarnished silver. The USSR showed up for their tarnished gold.

When you’re used to winning, making a winning effort, and know you won, losing is hard.

It’s especially hard for low-character, low effort people, those who lie and cheat their way through life and call it winning. Even harder when they teach their kids to lie and cheat and call it winning.

Wrestling With Social Competition

When you want everything so bad nothing else matters, you might have a problem.

If that’s how you approach life, get help. You can’t want everything so much that nothing else matters.

You have to choose. The right of choice is yours and yours alone.

Yes, you’ve heard of people who want everything all of the time and won’t accept anything less.

They have a name: Psychos. Or, Nuts, Kooks, Idiots. It’s a long list. Pick one. Or two. Decide.

Making decisions propels our lives from year to year, decade to decade. It’s good to remember the choices you made that created, that enabled, the life you live today.

Also remember that your life might suck because of the choices you made without thinking things through.

But guess what? You can also change your mind. Do that too much and you get tagged ‘Mental,’ but not where you’ll see it.

My advice? If you see something you like, something that reminds you of other things you like, take a good look before you pick it up and eat it.